Thursday, 30 October 2014

Ryan is a 7-year-old piano student in one of my classes, an
adorable and exasperating little boy who is infinitely curious. He walks into the classroom and immediately starts firing off questions:

“What’s that sign?”

“When are we going to learn b minor?”

“What does that mean?”

“How do you write out this rhythm?”

“What does the middle pedal do?”

And so on, endlessly. It’s both endearing and exhausting.He is also, you might guess, sharp as a tack,
eagerly retaining every piece of information I impart in class.

Not surprising, these two traits, curiosity and learning
ability, are known to go together.And a
recent study published in the journal Neuron
shows how they are connected on an anatomical level.The researchers, led by Matthias Gruber from
the University of California at Davis, gave people a stack of questions and
asked them to rate how curious they were to know the answers.Then, they put each person in an fMRI scanner
to look at what parts of the brain were active while they were learning the
answers to the questions.While in the
scanner, the subjects were shown one of the questions.They then saw a picture of random person’s face, and then the answer to the question.This was repeated for the whole stack of
questions.Later, the researchers tested whether
the subjects had learned the answers to the questions, and found that, in each
case, when the subject was most curious about the answer, he or she was most
likely to remember it.

The interesting part of this study comes next:the researchers also tested to see which
faces the subjects remembered best. They found that subjects remembered faces
presented after a curiosity-provoking question, but that faces presented after
a low-curiosity question were not remembered well.In other words, simply putting someone in a
state of high curiosity increased their ability to remember all information,
not just information the person was curious about.

The fMRI data in this study show that during states of high
curiosity, there is increased activity in the midbrain, and in the nucleus
accumbens, two areas of the brain known to be involved in motivation and
reward.Intrinsic motivation, our desire
for knowledge, activates the same areas as external motivators.The fMRI data also showed that the greatest
memory benefit from curiosity occurred when there was co-activation of the
midbrain motivation areas along with the hippocampus, a structure long known to
be important for learning.The
researchers speculate that activity in the motivation pathways of the brain
might drive increased activity in the hippocampus, and this co-activation is
the anatomical explanation for why curiosity aids learning.

As a teacher, I find this result both fascinating and
useful.The take-home for me is that I
can increase my students' ability to learn simply by calling on their
curiosity.Instead of just telling them
information, I can ask them questions, get them wondering about the answers
first, to activate those intrinsic motivation pathways.If they’re wondering what the answer is,
they’re more likely to remember it when I tell them, and they'll also remember other information I tell them at the same time.

As for Ryan, lately he’s dying to learn about 6/8 time.What is it?What does it mean?I think I’ll
keep him in suspense a little longer (since it doesn’t come up in the
curriculum until after Christmas).In
this case, I don’t think curiosity will kill the cat; instead, it will prime
the hippocampus to help Ryan remember what I teach him.

Monday, 20 October 2014

One of my grade 1 piano students is working
on the piece The Snake by Renee
Christopher and is having a hard time with the fingering, which is admittedly a
little tricky in places.In a recent
lesson, I watched her struggle, and tried to correct her with verbal
instructions:“Start on finger one.Tuck now! No, onto D, that’s it, now move
finger 2 onto A…”It was not actually
very helpful for her.So I stopped her,
and instead said, “Watch me”, and played the passage for her.She tried again, and there was definite
improvement, but still mistakes.So I
played it for her again, and then she played it again, and we went back and
forth a few more times until she had the fingering down.

Learning by observation is actually fairly
common in musical training.It’s less
common in other fields, such as sports or physical therapy, but studies have
shown that it is useful for all types of motor learning.This struck me as kind of odd at first,
because I tend of think of motor learning as something that only comes through
practice.How we can “practice” just by
watching someone else?The answer has to
do with the way our brains are primed to imitate others.There is a class of neurons known as “mirror
neurons” which are active both when we perform an action, and also
when we observe someone else performing that action.In other words, for those neurons, observing
a motor task is almost the same as actually performing the task.When we make those neurons fire, the connections
between the neurons get altered, enabling us to learn the movement just by
watching.

And research studies have proven this.Many studies use simple movements, such as
moving your thumb quickly in a certain direction.But even using this straightforward model,
observation helps.For example, a 2005 paper by Stefan et al.usedstimulationoftheprimarymotorcortextocause people to move their thumbs.Practicing thumb movements in a particular
direction led to an increase in the acceleration of the movement in that
direction. The researchersshowed that people who simply watched a video of someone moving
their thumb in thatsamedirection increased
their movement accelerationalmost as much as those who practiced the movement.In contrast, a group that watched a video of
someone moving their thumb in the opposite direction did not increase the
movement acceleration.The study showed
that the motor cortex can be rewired just by watching movements, through the
activation of mirror neurons.

How well can we learn movements just by
observation?In order to learn a
movement, it’s pretty clear that just watching someone is not as effective as
physically practicing – otherwise every armchair sports fanatic would be an
expert athlete!So how much does adding
observation to our practice session help?How should practicing and watching be combined? In a study by Shea et al. (2000), participants
had to learn to keep a dot centred on a screen in a video-game type of
exercise.The results showed that physical
practice was superior to observation, but that a combination of physical
practice and observation seemed to be even better.Another study from the lab of Paul Anderson used the volleyball serve as a model and
compared observation before physical practice with observations interspersed
into the practice sessions.The most
effective strategy was to have participants observe serves before practicing,
and then observe a few more during the early stages of practice.

And who should we watch doing the movement
we want to learn?An expert, who does
the movement perfectly? Or someone who is learning themselves, so we can learn
from their mistakes?Apparently, the
best scenario is when we have the opportunity to see both.When we watch an expert, we make a mental
model for how the movement is supposed to be performed.But when we watch someone learning the
movement, making mistakes and correcting them, we make a strategy for learning
the movement.Both are useful.

With this in mind, one approach for motor
skill learning is “dyad practice”, where people practice in groups of two,
taking turns practicing and observing.Dyad practice has several advantages:it minimizes fatigue, and maximizes time spent using equipment.This approach is used in sports training, and
in training surgeons and other professionals.

As a result of reading all this research,
I’ve started demonstrating songs more to my students.I always have, of course – the students
should hear every new song before they head home to practice it.But I haven’t always had the students watch me perform the song.Usually, I have them look at the music while
I’m demonstrating, so that they can make a connection with the music they see
on the page and how it is supposed to sound when they play it. But these days I to try to play it for them
twice – once while they watch the music, and once while they watch my
hands.Let’s get those mirror neurons
firing!

About Me

Tara Gaertner is a neuroscientist, music educator, writer and speaker. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music from McGill University and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Texas, Houston. She has taught piano, flute, and music theory since 1988 and currently teaches the Music for Young Children program as well as private piano and flute lessons. She is an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia, lecturing on Neuroscience in the department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.